Comcast Corp. agreed to buy Time Warner Cable for $45.2 billion in stock, in a deal announced Thursday morning. The transaction would combine the country’s two biggest cable operators.

Jeff Wlodarczak of Pivotal Research Group pointed out the combined entity would control the dominant way consumers access the Internet in 76 million U.S. households, as well as key television programming in the form of NBC. He said approval wouldn’t be a slam dunk. “Clearly they are going to have to make significant concessions, but I think there is a reasonable chance they can get a deal done,” said Wlodarczak, a media and communications analyst at the firm.

Antitrust lawyer Allen Grunes of GeyerGorey LLP said divestiture wouldn’t be a big issue in regulators’ review since the two companies don’t compete in a lot of local markets. But he predicted the Justice Department would be concerned with how the merger would impact online video distributors like Netflix
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“It wouldn’t surprise me if Comcast also makes some commitments to increase [broadband] speed and penetration in the U.S.,” he said.

“I actually think it will go through,” said Grunes.

Either the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission will review whether the merger for antitrust concerns. The Federal Communications Commission will look at whether the deal is in the public interest.

The group Public Knowledge came out against the merger quickly, saying a bigger Comcast would be “the bully in the schoolyard” able to dictate terms to content creators, Internet companies and distributors. “By raising the costs of its rivals and business partners, an enlarged Comcast would raise costs for consumers, who ultimately pay the bills.”

Seth Bloom, former general counsel of the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, said he expects Congress to hold hearings and that an FCC review would be tougher than at the antitrust agencies, either the Justice Department or FTC.

“Because they apply a public interest test, the bar is higher at the FCC than at the antitrust agencies,” he said.

Bloom said he expects Comcast will have to meet conditions similar to those it did when it bought NBC Universal from General Electric. One such condition was that Comcast would provide for a number of independent channels not affiliated with Comcast.